Growing your own fruit and vegetables is a relatively easy thing to start doing. However, there are several things you want to consider before digging up your lawn and planting dozens of potato plants.
Choosing your crop
The most important thing to think about is what fruit and veg you like and use regularly. Radishes are easy to grow in most gardens, but no good if you only have radish once in a blue moon and most of your family don't even like it. Make a list, plan your "perfect crop" and then find out if growing those things is possible. You may have to compromise in places, but that isn't a bad thing, Maybe you will even discover something new that you like!
However, it is also worth looking at how much time a particular type of vegetable will take to look after. Some crops will demand a lot of your time, especially things like peas and celery, whilst others like turnip and broad beans almost grow on their own with little input needed other than watering. A good beginner crop list might looks something like:
Broad Beans
Runner Beans
Carrots
Radish
Spinach
Lettuce
Cherry Tomatoes
Cress
Potatoes
Courgettes
Beetroot
Onions
Location, Location, Location
When thinking about GYO, you need to consider both the geographical location of your garden, and then the location of your vegetable plot within that garden. It is going to be much easier to grow tomatoes outside in Devon than it is to grow them outside in Glasgow. If you know anyone locally who grow's their own, they could be a font of useful advice concerning what is viable and what isn't in your part of the country. It is not just temperature that will dictate this, soil conditions also vary greatly across the UK, and whilst carrots will grow well in sandy, well drained soil, they will have a difficult time in soil heavy with clay.
Next you need to look at where you are going to have your growing beds. Ideally you should try to keep a vegetable patch in the open so it gets sun for as much of the day as possible. Very few crops will grow in shaded areas (Artichokes and spinach being some of the few that can tolerate light shade). If you have room against a southfacing wall, consider buying or building a Cold Frame. This can extend your viable growing season by several weeks in some areas. You can buy a ready-made cold frame for as little as £30 or make one for even less.
Size Isn't Everything
Having a small garden or even a concrete covered yard doesn't mean you can't grow your own. You just need a be a bit more selective about exactly what you grow. If you have a large garden, you could very well dedicate one area to slower growing main crop vegetables like Potatoes and swede, and another area to faster growing salad vegetables. However, in a small garden, growing main crop vegetables might not be a great use of space. In the time it takes to grow one crop of swede, you could have grown several crops of salad veg in the same area.
If your garden is particularly short o...
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